The first trailer for off-road racing sequel Dirt 3 was shown during ESPN’s X-Games coverage last night, and you can see it below. Needless to say, it features Ken Block’s fancy Ford Focus racing about a bit, suggesting different environments for vehicular athletics. Phwoar, eh readers?

Excellent. Hopefully more of the same, but better, from DiRT2. With more exploding trucks, obviously. Indeed, the exploding truck shot suggests that they may be including a gymkhana mode, which would be cool.

Why don’t they just go all out and copy blast corps and have the final few races be on various planets? If you use the button which winds down your windows you die from the lack of oxygen and freezing/burning after 20, but at least the steam clears from your windows.

I forget the exact number, but I was appalled to find out that there were only 3-5 full length rally tracks in Dirt 2. Sure they were broken up into stages, and there were other events and vehicles, but I bought the game for the rallying.

I remember just before D2’s release Ken Block was saying how he was going to enter the WRC to spread his awesome and race with his heroes, the guy cant drive for shit and compared to the REAL wrc drivers hes nothing.

the fact his face is still on this dissapoints me, i know McRae is dead but pls CM stop bastardizing rally in favour of today dumb fuck console generation.

personally im more excited about the official WRC game by black bean then this.

It’s not the console generation, it’s the damn x-games culture that breeds this rubbish. DIRT 2 was entertaining, but I was forced to turn the speakers down outside of the racing because of the silly ‘rad’ VOs.

I’ve always loved the Dirt / Grid games, but never actually finished any of them, but frankly it looks like they’ve really pushed the boat out again in terms of graphical car-porn. And even if have to endure the yelpy dude-rock again i’ll be givign this a go.

But seriously, F1, Grid2 and now Dirt3? The Codies seem to be a machine these days!

I always loved Codemasters racing games.
Sure its far from been a sim racing but its a great arcade simulation mix
Cant wait for DIrt 3, F1 2010 and more importantly Grid 2 ( my fav race game since Colin mcray 2 )

I like DIrt2 and Grid, but I’m terrible at them… Dirt 2 sits at just the right part of the respectful / reverential balance for me. Can’t see myself getting this though, I only have their current ones due to a Steam sale. :)

Dirt 2 is still quite an arcadey feeling game, but i’d say far less so than Dirt. I didn’t play a heck of a lot of the first one because I just couldn’t get a feel for the way the cars handled, but i’ve put in a disastrous amount of hours with Dirt 2. It’s really fun, and the handling seems to hit a sweet spot between arcadey and sim-like handling.

Also Vinraith, isn’t 1C (i think) coming out with WRC2010 real soon? I was watching a trailer or something for it the other month and it looks really good, maybe a successor to Richard Burns Rally.

If Kieron were here, he’d tell you to pay attention to the music track playing in the slow-mo part of the video. It’s “Heaven”, by UNKLE, and in its music video (directed by Spike Jonze, incidentally), slow-mo skater dudes escape exploding ramps and such. Here:

That’s sort of awesome. I mean, it’s sort of minor fail in that it’s a slightly undercooked homage (a real life video depicts more, and more dangerous, explosions than a videogame video?), but still, that’s sort of awesome.

I hope this has far more, far larger rally stages. The flamboyant fireworksy stuff is fun but their rewind feature and drifty handling really lends itself to driving quickly in a forest for 20 minutes or so. Although it looks like this version might have rain and snow in it, which would certainly be a plus.

Rain! Snow! Less-than-perfect racing conditions, huzzah! Love Codies racing games (with the exception of fuel, god that game was terrible) and I have no doubt that this will exceed my expectations, as the others have done.

What I’d like is for a rally game with dirt 2’s level of accessible handling and handy rewinds to cover the length of the Dakar rally. Both of them. I don’t give a stuff about the silly racetrack modes or the duuuude-ishness.

still, I Am A Fan of Codemasters´ Driving Team (what was it?)
– got DiRT and GRiD- they´re lacking in common sensical features, like been allowed to practice new vehicles in the campaign mode before being forced to use them in the next race.
The menus are very flashy, but also cumbersome and slow- but no worries, the actual driving experience is as close to Grand Tourismo (heaven) on the PC.
The graphics are also a bit more than allright ! – I expect the 3 to be good aswell, but as i mentioned the 1 is decent aswell, and havent been playing a lot of it- so i wont be picking up the 3 in a long time